


if we should die tonight

by xerampelinae



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle of Azanulbizar, Fix-It, Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: The sons of Durin and the battle of Azanulzibar. Again. And again.





	

And if we should die tonight  
Then we should all die together  
-Ed Sheeran, “I see fire”

 

Before the dwarrow really know it, the battle for Azanulbizar has begun. A vast host of orcs pushes back the army of Thror, King of Durin’s folk, back along the slopes surrounding the gate, but the dwarrow press back, desperate for the sake of a home long lost. The orcs number so, so many and Thror’s dwarrow scatter and fight desperately.

History has lost the reason why Azog the Defiler swears, on the battlefield, to end Durin’s line, though perhaps it lies in their common (if distant) origin in Gundabad. However the oath came to be, orcs swarm the King’s guards until none stand between him and Azog, while the princes fight on a neighboring slope.

Against a lesser orc Thror might have survived--and indeed had, fighting in the dwarven vanguard--but the Pale Orc is larger and cannier than any other. Thror’s body crashes down in a clatter of armor muted by the thunder of battle, but Azog’s roar as he raises Thror’s head rises over the din.

Across the slopes and all the orcs and dwarrow between them, Thorin meets Azog’s challenging gaze and skids to a stop. His grandfather’s head bounces down the slope, heavy crown lost and unadorned beard streaming out like a banner in the wind, goreless. Thorin screams out and lunges forward, sword rising, and his father stops him. 

“Father?” Thorin says, surges forward and is once again stymied.

“Stay back,” says Thror.

“No,” says Thorin, “I would fight with you.”

“Azog means to kill us all. One by one he will destroy the line of Durin. But by my life,” says Thror, “he will not take my son. You will stay here.”

Thror pushes away from his son, plowing through orcs even as he raises his war hammer. In the face of his order, Thorin stays back and fights where he stands; when he turns he can see the gold of his brother’s hair as they fight desperately on.

Later it will be said of Thror that grief and loss drove him from the slopes before the Dimril gate; no dwarf left living can trace his movements beyond what his sons know.

 

Frerin aches with the hours of fighting, but, he thinks, that is little to the nothingness of death. There is less hope now: at least on the slopes on which the vanguard and those nearest to them fight, they understand that two kings (albeit one uncrowned) have been lost. 

It is a hopeless fight but they are not yet ready to lay down their arms and their lives.

There is no time yet to grieve, Frerin knows, to do so now would be the death of him. Just the thought of it is distraction enough and Frerin slips in the mud beaten up by footfall and blood. A hand catches his arm in time to keep him from going down in the muck--worse, he realizes, not mere muck but also the clustered bodies of a dwarf Frerin does not know and the orc that slew him--and he stumbles but does not fall to his knees.

“Thank you, Bifur,” Frerin says, and the dwarf grins at him before loosing his arm for a doubled grip on his boar spear. Two shuddering breaths later, Frerin resettles his hands on the hilt of his sword and begins fighting again.

 

In the days before the coming of Smaug, Thorin and Frerin had learned to fight alongside one another. Versatility and adaptability are the weapons of the ennobled and warriors; Thorin fought willingly enough with sword and shield and Frerin with a bow or a sword held two-handed, if it came to it. 

Now, though, Frerin can see Azog bearing down on his brother. Azog is already so much larger than Thorin--closest, perhaps, to a Man’s size--that his strength alone might knock the shield from Thorin’s arm. The Pale Orc discards economy of motion for a more powerful swing of his mace. Another blow sends both Thorin and his sword scattering down the incline. Frerin gropes for the bow looped over his back. There is hardly room to breath, let alone gather the space to nock an arrow and draw it back.

Azog advances and raises his mace. Frerin shakily blocks an orcblade. Thorin raises a fallen branch of oak in time to ward of one-two-three blows. Azog stumbles as his blows are redirected and Thorin raises his recovered sword. Frerin kills one orc only to see another take its place. The orcs are not an infinite army but their numbers seem inexhaustible. A spearhead bites through the orc’s chest; Frerin has already turned in search before the spear withdraws and the body falls. 

No cries carry over the din. 

There is no sign of Frerin’s brother on the hillside. There is no sign of Azog, but there is no renewed hope in his absence. Frerin’s bow is useless in his hand.

 

The sun is setting and finally the battle has petered off. The meager light of a dark winter’s day is brightened only with the day’s end and the living wander the corpse-strewn slopes for those beloved and those not yet dead.

Bifur lies still, beard and brow soaked in his own blood, but he defies the axe in his head and breathes on.

The tip of Frerin’s sword all but drags in the mud and he watches his brother’s agemate reunite with his own brother. Dwalin and Balin embrace and knock heads with the weary gentleness of grieved hope born before the Dimril gate. Balin weeps as he stands with his brother and Frerin turns to his own.

Thorin kept his head, at least, Frerin thinks, tears welling fruitlessly in his eyes. Nadad, he doesn’t say with a child’s trust in his elder’s capacity. Thorin doesn’t have the breath to answer him, with his chest crushed in.

Frerin shakes and watches instead the deepening colors of the sky back into the morning’s dark clouds. The first cries of the battle ring out once more. Frerin casts his gaze about, weary and perplexed, and sees first Bifur then his grandfather fighting in the midst of his guards.

“What?” Frerin breathes out. The dwarrow around him are fresh as battle’s onset, maille unbloodied, and braids unsalted by exertion. The ground underfoot is muddied but only so much; there are no corpses, save those beginning to fall now.

Bifur shouts a warning and Frerin dodges a blow instinctively. The sword cuts shallowly along his arm as he reaches past the bow around his back for his sword; Frerin inhales sharply, surprised by the reality of the pain, but manages to draw his sword. 

On the hillside Frerin sees the deep blue of his brother’s gambeson. He loses track of Thorin as he throws himself into battle.

 

Thror dies again. Thrain disappears. Thorin bleeds out in the mire.

Bifur squeezes Frerin’s shoulder comfortingly as he kneels in the mud but Frerin’s eyes are caught on Thorin’s shorn beard--Mahal, he can remember the way it looked, before he cut it in mourning for Erebor--and the beads in his hair.

“Nadad,” Frerin says, “what am I to do?”

For the first time since Frerin gained the words to ask of him, Thorin is silent.

 

The sunset returns too quickly again to morning cloud. This third dawn Frerin finds cruelest. He draws his sword and begins to fight again.

 

Dawn comes again and again. Frerin spreads his attention across his family, but there is little enough of it as is and three of them. Thror he saves twice, but it is only a temporary measure. There are so many orcs and Azog always follows. The roar that announces Thror’s death rings out steady and damning as keeping time, near-inaudible. Thrain disappears across the slopes. Finally, Thorin follows and falls. Still other dwarrow fight and die and fight and die.

There is no time to warn his family. The ring ensnares only the span of the light of a dark winter’s day and the battle waged in it.

Frerin discovers that is possible to have less hope than he had when he first fought this battle.

 

Once, Thrain survives. “Our people were hewn of stone that we would be strong, that we would endure,” he says. “I do not think that I was made to endure the death of my father and my son, still young, in a single battle.” 

“It is not your fault, Father.” And yet Frerin finds his father inconsolable, and by the time the sunset is burned off into cloud again, Thrain has disappeared from the ranks of the dead and the few living, never to be seen again. Frerin does not try to save his father again.

 

Thror dies again, and Frerin can hardly distinguish the roar marking it from any other on the battlefield. Thorin is stopped from following Thrain and settles back into maintaining the point upon which he stands. Desperately, Frerin cuts his way through the orc army to fight a sword’s arc away from his brother.

Thorin doesn’t say anything, merely fighting on. Frerin, at least, finds himself comforted to have more than the flash of his brother’s colors on the edge of his vision.

 

Azog crests the hill and his army parts before him. Frerin should know better but he is too rash. He doesn’t take his cues from his forefathers’ battles but rushes in. He wants this day to end for good.

The mace in Azog’s hand knocks Frerin down. The strange knife in Azog’s other hand guts him. Somewhere, Thorin cries out something that might be a challenge. Frerin blinks and Azog loses a hand and disappears like Thrain. Pain blooms overwhelmingly and the blue of Thorin’s eyes guides Frerin clear.

 

Thorin came first of Thrain’s children with the traditional dark coloring of Durin the Deathless, and so was dressed in dark, regal blue. The blue became Dis’ as well, after her birth, but Frerin has always known it with a child’s understanding: my brother, my protector, my prince.

 

Frerin wakes under a clouded sky, just as he died under it. When he seeks out the blue of Thorin’s clothing, Thorin is looking back. They make their way to each other before the heart of battle reaches them and fight close together again.

“How many times?” Thorin asks.

“Too many,” Frerin says. 

 

Frerin’s bow is singing with readiness by the time Azog comes for the last sons of Durin. The first arrow finds Azog’s throat but the orc does not stumble, only swings his mace and throws it. Thorin loses his shield blocking the mace. The second arrow finds Azog’s chest but the orc keeps coming. Thorin is distracted by an orc canny to its general’s danger. The third arrow breaks with the bow when Azog lunges forward with his knife. Azog falls gracelessly into the mire, gutted and beheaded.

There is no time to celebrate. Thorin roars out a battlecry of their people and they rally. My brother, my king, Frerin thinks, and echoes his brother.

 

The sunset blessedly turns to stars. There are no songs or feasting in victory, but Frerin stands amidst the many dead with his brother. The span between this embrace and yesterday’s is that of a small eternity with the unceasing ring of battle. Thorin’s hand slides up Frerin’s nape to tip their heads gently together and Frerin finally has the space to weep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Mynuet for letting me bounce this idea and for inspiring the relative happiness of its resolution. (Originally, the loop would have ended with Frerin's canonical death, but yeah, we're not doing that today.) Also "I see fire" because I finally listened to the damn thing and there are lots of interesting lyrics and if I ever get around to recording some musical covers, I want to do it. Let me work on my abysmal ukelele playing first.  
> I had a really hard time writing this. I'm hopeful it was interesting, but most of the writing has been during periods of quasi-insomnia. Movie canon was chosen because honestly it's been more than a decade since I read the book unless you count reading some niblings "Riddles in the Dark" a couple years ago while I just watched the movies last month. Also because it was a little easier doing research when I could ctrl+F movie scripts.


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